Matters of Supreme importance

In case you’ve been in a Nepali monastery for the past week or so with the battery on your iPad completely drained, the Supreme Court of the US is hearing arguments on two cases involving how governments accommodate (or don’t) the institution of marriage. Specifically, whether states can enact laws banning same-sex marriage (California’s Proposition 8, from 2008), and whether the Federal government can define a marriage as being solely between one man and one woman (the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) of 1996).

There’s not been such a potential for blushes and sly asides in the Court since the Supremes in 1964 took on the issue of determining what pornography is. (Okay, officially that was a ruling that obscenity wasn’t in fact free speech and was therefore not protected under the provisions of the First Amendment. But you’ll perhaps recall the high point of that case was Justice Potter Stewart’s admission that pornography was bloody difficult to define legally, “but I know it when I see it.”)

You can find coverage on the arguments pretty much anywhere in the mainstream media and the lunatic fringe. I like two speculative viewpoints: Andy Borowitz’s “report” of Antonin Scalia throwing a hissy fit at having to hear about gay couples all week long, And The Onion’s “story” about the entire Court engaging in a gigantic yawn and proclaiming that the whole same-sex marriage thing is a big drink of no-alcohol beer.

So far I’ve not seen any comment on the fact that six guys in dresses form the majority of the team that’s going to decide these issues. I guess that’s what I’m here for—to point out important things like that.

Cleanup in the bakery aisle

While I was in Sedona at Christmas, I went into a gourmet-type grocery store & had a bit of a nose around. I’m always interested in these things, particularly the meat market, fish counter the & bakery area.

I have to say that when I saw these “savory scones” I was absolutely poleaxed.

I mean, the confluence of the various colored bits & the rough-edged mounds of drop scones…well, frankly, it looks like little slightly-tidied-up scoops of vomit.

Just sayin’…

Fast times

Britain’s The Telegraph has pretty much raised the practice of writing obituaries to a high art. You know you’re in the groove when they collect your stuff and sell them in book form. Multiple volumes’ worth.

It was the Torygraph’s obit of Elizabeth Taylor that I used to anchor my thoughts on that classy dame, and you can easily spend hours just clicking through their various retrospectives. Makes a nice change from the quasi-literate stuff a lot of news outlets pump out these days.

A few days ago a friend forwarded this obituary of a bloke I’d never heard of, but whom I wished I’d stood next to at a bar after reading it. I mean—the guy’s a cat burglar, for crying out loud. I didn’t even know we still had cat burglars—although, I suppose one could infer, with this obit, that we don’t, that it’s a dying trade. Like carriage makers, or pocket calculator manufacturers.

Well, the thing that struck me about this piece was the phrase “flashy cars and fast women”. And I wondered, Are those modifiers interchangeable? Could it be “fast cars and flashy women” and still mean the same thing?

For that matter, what, exactly is a fast woman? Is being a fast woman a good thing? Does your answer to that depend on whether you're a woman or a man? Is there such a thing as a fast man? If so, does it carry the same connotations as the female designation? Is calling some chick a “fast woman” equivalent to saying “she’s no better than she should be”? If so, how good should she be?

(Sidebar inquiry: why is it you never hear anyone remark, “He’s no better than he should be”?)

In “Early Mornin’ Rain”, Gordon Lightfoot tells us, “The liquor tasted good and the women all were fast.” I have a feeling that this doesn’t refer to their mental acuity.

Either way, I’m thinking I don’t qualify. I find this oddly dispiriting.

I’m betting that fast women may or may not come to good ends; but their passing will be noted in The Telegraph.

Springtime for Hitler & Google

You know, that one clip from the film Downfall has to be the most recycled Academy Award nominee in history. It’s got more incarnations than the inhabitants of a large Tibetan monastery. You know the one: where Hitler is huddled in the Führerbunker deploying non-existent armies in the defense of Berlin while waiting for the Old Gods to smite the Red Army for good and all.

I myself have brought a couple to your attention: the one purporting to have our Adolf going mental at discovering CalTrans is going to close the 405 Freeway in LA, resulting in Carmageddon. He asks the eternal question: how’s he supposed to get to LAX? “Fucking Sepulveda? Please!”

I feel his pain.

And the one where he’s just learned what real defeat is: when your software hosting provider screws the pooch and you take a look at the fine print of your service level agreement (SLA). The thought of Hitler and Goering starting out programming in COBOL is just cherce.

But Third Reich 2.0’s latest installment (that I know of, as of this writing) gives new meaning to the tagline, “Don’t be evil.” It.has our intrepid Nazi receiving the news that Google Reader is shutting down, because the monolith needs to focus on a few products, like Google Glass. 

“Fuck those fucking glasses and the nerd they rode in on.” I’m looking forward to seeing those words on a tee-shirt sometime soon.

¡Daß ist ausgezeichnet!

Tending the flock

Hmm, despite the report that the papal Twitter account would shut down when Benedict XVI hung up his mitre, it looks like Pope Francis the Numberless (apparently; I guess you don’t get a numeric designator until there are at least two of you) has taken up the social challenge.

So far (as of time of writing), he’s had one tweet, but nearly two million followers. I’m assuming they’re mostly inherited from Benedict.

Still got a long way to go to catch up with the Dalai Lama, though.

Garage matters

For some reason this upper respiratory thing that attacked me last week has hung on like a baby gorilla and I’ve not dragged myself out of the house for several days (except to take walks, which is my substitute for going to the gym).

So it was a big deal that I got in my car to go to Whole Foods yesterday morning—the car’s not been out of the garage since Saturday.

But I also opened my second garage (yes, there are two that come with this flat—for which I’m paying a huge amount of rent; I use the second to store stuff like my good china, the bookcases I’m trying to get rid of and all the broken-down packing cartons for my next move, since the garage is so situated that you can’t actually get a car in or out of it) to find some old journals. And when I was pulling out of my car garage I realized the storage garage door hadn’t closed. It kept getting down about ¾ of the way and then just went back up.

I couldn’t get it to close. Which meant I couldn’t leave the place until it could somehow be made to close. Which meant I had to call the property management company, and the rep had to check this and that before she called a garage door company.

(The last time I actually opened this garage was December 2011, when I loaded up my mid-sized rental car to take 13 cartons of books to the used bookshop. There were cobwebs and stuff all over the thing. This complex was built in 1993; I’m sure everything in that door mechanism was original to that date.)

The short version of this story is that my day was pretty well shot, waiting for the repair guy.

But the good part is the repair guy, Bill. He must be 70, I swear, but still out fixing people’s garage door openers. He had to put this cable back on a reel—but then he went through tightening bolts, hammering the rails and spraying some industrial-strength type of WD40 on anything that moved. He even replaced the rollers, and you could hear the difference when the door slid open and shut.

Here’s the thing—Bill wasn’t interested in just doing a quick fix, he wanted to make sure the damned thing was well and truly fixed, that it wouldn’t give anyone any trouble anytime soon.

I’d forgot there were people who took such pride in their work that they go to that length.

So—not such a bad day after all.

Long green

There are plenty of get-well/be-well programs out there, geared at getting “healthcare consumers” to take charge of their own health. You know, be active, stop smoking, eat something besides double-cheese sausage pizzas and French fries. That sort of thing.

Most of the ones in the US are sponsored by health insurers, who hope to keep down the amount of money they fork out in claims by keeping obesity-related ailments down in their member populace. Also, employers trying to keep down the cost of health insurance and keep up employee productivity without having to pay, you know, “market” salaries. They provide incentives like lower deductibles or employee premium costs for employees who stop smoking, join gyms or sign up for Weight Watchers.

Here’s a study out of South Africa that seems to be telling us that giving consumers a more direct incentive could encourage them to eat more healthily. That is, giving them actual cash-back incentives for buying fruit, veg and low-fat dairy does indeed change their consumption habits.

Well—at least, it changes their buying habits. Dunno what they do with the stuff after they get it home.

The higher the cash back, the more people spend on the good stuff: if the rebate is 10%, people increased their spending 6%, as opposed to people offered a 25% rebate; they splashed out 9.3% more.

And; a similar study is being embarked on in the US, although the rebate being trialed is a trivial 5%, and the venue is Wal-Mart, an emporium not known for its health-conscious customers. It’ll be interesting if there’s any change in shoppers’ habits.

Anyhow—there’s not enough money in the world to get me to buy Brussels sprouts, let alone eat them.

Paper trail

You know, there are times when words are completely superfluous to requirements:

Water of life

My post yesterday sparked an exchange with someone who’s also a Mary Black fan, during which I made the comment (referring to the plethora of sad songs you can count on from the Irish) that it’s a good thing I don’t have any whiskey in my house.

Which is true enough, because I don’t. I am (temporarily, I hope) in a whiskeyless state. But if I did have it, it wouldn’t be Irish. I’ve just never got my mouth around the taste of the stuff. (A nice, single-malt from Spey, now… But since that’s kind of on the ruinously expensive non-essential side of my shopping list, it’s just going to have to remain a dream.)

If this affronts your sensibilities, then all I can say is, get over it. Think about it this way—it leaves all the more for you.

Sure, I’ve had it in Irish coffee—whoop-de-do. You pile enough sugar, coffee and whipped cream on anything, it’ll taste fine. (Except Brussels sprouts.)

Winding up my trip to Ireland, back in the 90s, I went to dinner at some posh hotel in Dublin, where the silverware at my place setting marched in serried ranks to either side of the table. I’d been drinking nothing but Smithwick’s lovely ale since my first night in that very town two weeks earlier. (I’d had the obligatory portion of Guinness—a glass, which I gagged my way through only half of before giving up on it—then, at my next pub of call, I asked for a recommendation, was handed a Smithwick’s and set for the duration.)

And, in fact, I had a Smithwick’s in the posh hotel bar while waiting for my table. This being Ireland, being in a posh hotel is no barrier to civilized conversation, and I’d chatted for a while with a couple of blokes who explained to me that all these young chicks milling about were dressed up because there was some sort of event analogous to a prom taking place there.

They also asked the inevitable question when the Irish found out you were an American traveling through their country: where’ve you been and how did you like it. They were pretty impressed with the amount of territory I’d covered—all four provinces, only missing deep Kerry.

“You were moving pretty fast,” one observed.

“I had to,” I replied. “Otherwise I’d have moss all over me.”

(It rained a lot while I was there. And when they call it "The Emerald Isle, they're not talking about precious stones.)

Anyway, I was escorted into the posh dining room and settled at my table, with my book (I think I was reading Boccaccio, but I’d have to verify) in a little walled-off area where a couple of business guys were having dinner. Looking at six different types of forks and spoons on either side of where the plate goes makes me nervous. I told the waiter that, while I wasn’t a big fan of Irish whiskey, I’d like to try one of the local products, if he’d recommend one. He did.

He asked me (reluctantly, I believe) if I’d like ice with it. I countered, “How is it properly drunk?”

“With a splash of spring water, madam.” (They madam you all over the place in Ireland and Britain; go figure.)

“Okay, that’s how we’ll do it.”

There was some small ceremony—a smallish glass with maybe an inch or two of the whiskey (and at this point I don’t recall what it was; but it wasn’t the stuff that’s made in Ulster), and a small carafe of water. He poured the latter carefully into the whiskey and then left me to it.

Well, reader, it still didn’t taste very good, and I’ve not had another drink of it until a couple of weeks ago when I was at the RSA Conference in Moscone Center, and there was some “Irish Tech” booth there with some chick pouring Tullamore Dew into tiny plastic thimbles. What the hell, I thought, I needed something to wash down the ibuprofen with. So I let her give me some. There might have been half a tablespoon’s worth.

I still ditched about half of it when I got out of her sight.

Oh—but I did have a very nice conversation back in Dublin with the Irish businessmen in the posh hotel dining room about their constitution and the recent stopover by Boris Yeltsin, when he’d apparently been too drunk (or possibly hungover) to get out of the plane even though the Irish Taoiseach was standing out on the tarmac ready to welcome him to Ireland and encourage him to buy from the duty free shops.

See—in Ireland, you don’t need no stinkin’ whiskey to get the crack flowing.

Songs for Ireland

In honor of Saint Patrick’s Day—a celebration that, as far as I can tell, is Irish-American rather than Irish in origin—I’ve been thinking about a quote from G.K. Chesterton:

For the great Gaels of Ireland

Are the men that God made mad.

For all their wars are merry

And all their songs are sad.

Not entirely true, of course, although I guess I can see why it might look that way at times. Because a lot of the songs are about the bitterness and misery of war, and the men (almost always the men) who are consumed by it.

A prime example of that is “The Patriot Game”, which was written by Dominic Behan, brother of the larger-than-life playwright Brendan Behan. (The Behan boys were also nephews of Pedar Kearney, who wrote the lyrics to what’s now the national anthem of Ireland. Think about a nation whose national anthem is called “The Soldier’s Song”.) Here's Behan himself to sing it.

Mary Black’s “Song for Ireland” is an impressionistic survey of the country. But even this captures the disconnect between the dream and waking views.

Since this is, as I wot, an Irish-American holiday, I’ll give you another viewpoint: Cherish The Ladies’ “The Back Door”. For so many years, this was the future of Ireland: its best and brightest slinking into other countries to make a living on the grey economy.

It has other resonances, too. I can’t tell you what the cry, “I want my own bed, my own kitchen” has meant to me over the years.

Finally—one of my earliest experiences of Irish music was of course the Clancy Brothers (and Tommy Makem, although I wasn’t that wild about him). And one of their signature pieces was this one. If you’re summing up a life, of any nationality, there couldn’t possibly be a better one than “The Parting Glass”. If there’s a wake at the end of my run, someone better be singing this.

Sláinte bha!